Opinion
Appeal
The legacy of IPA, founded by Nikhil Chakravartty, the doyen of journalism in India, to keep the flag of independent media flying high, is facing the threat of extinction due to the effect of the Covid pandemic. Only an emergency funding can avert such an eventuality. We appeal to all those who believe in the freedom of expression to contribute to this noble cause.China’s Growing Presence In Central Asia Should Worry Old Allies
By Nantoo Banerjee India’s External Affairs Ministry may disagree, but the country’s attempt to make its presence felt in Central Asia has come rather too late. The initiative should have started three decades ago. India could probably rope in Russia to launch a joint trade and economic cooperation programme...
Arresting BJP Decline In UP Turning Difficult For Modi
By Dr. Gyan Pathak Successive surveys, month after month, have been recording sharp fall in BJP’s political fortune, and also a miraculous rise of Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh, especially since September 2021. The steep slide of the BJP led by Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh has necessitated...
Modi Assurances Not Good Enough To Scare Omicron Away
By Sushil Kutty The greetings and the good wishes have piled up at the entrance alongside dire predictions. Among the second lot are those which are related to the coronavirus. The coronavirus morphed several times and its latest variant Omicron is mildly severe compared to the horrendous Delta and...
Urgent Need To Strengthen Democracy And Democratic Structure
By Arun Srivastava In its desperation to prove secularism irrelevant and worthless the rightist forces. BJP and RSS, are creating a Frankenstein monster by making the police into an arrogant force that turns democratic institutions into a ramshackle. The saffron outfits are trying to depict secularism as fragile...
Qatar Follows Saudis And UAE To Clean Its Textbooks
By James M Dorsey Qatar has begun to cleanse its schoolbooks of supremacist, racist or derogatory references as well as celebrations of violent jihad and martyrdom, according to a recently released study. The revision of textbooks in the final year leading up to Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 World...
Politics In 2022 Likely To Be Marked By Further Violence
By Harihar Swarup As the year draws to an end, one can risk a little speculation about what we can expect from politics in India in 2022. As its national government crosses the mid-term point, BJP will fight the opposition in seven state elections. Uttar Pradesh, of course, will...
‘One Nation-One Ombudsman’ For Banks Comes Into Force
By K Raveendran Fancying on Prime Minister Modi’s ‘One nation-One poll’ idea, the Reserve Bank of India has launched the ‘One nation-One ombudsman’ programme. But unlike Modi’s poll plan, which could change the very nature and structure of democracy and governance in India, the reason for which it is...
Son Will Continue To Shine On Dynasties In 2022 And Beyond
By Sushil Kutty Akhilesh Yadav did an Aurangzeb on his father Mulayam Singh Yadav and grabbed the strings of the Samajwadi Party, which the father couldn’t thwart out of maybe filial reasons. But Mulayam’s younger sibling Shivpal Yadav could not stomach the usurpation and uncle and nephew broke ties—Shivpal...
Dilemma Of Evolving A Suitable Hybrid Mode Of Working
By Arjavi Indraneesh Omicron has put a spoke in the plan by companies to switch back to normal office work. As the new variant threatens to unleash a ‘Covid tsunami’, as forecast by the World Health Organisation, several companies have already delayed the switch back and asked their staff...
Spiralling European Gas, Electricity Prices A Lesson For India
By Prabir Purkayastha The current crisis in Europe of spiralling gas prices, coupled with a cold snap, brings out that the transition of any part of the world to green energy is not going to be easy. It also brings out the complexity in such a transition, that energy...
Bidding Adieu To A Moral Compass Of Our Time
By Arun Kumar Shrivastav Anti-apartheid icon Archbishop Desmond Tutu passed away on December 26 at 90. “He was ready. He went to meet his God, ready and willing,” said his 61-year-old daughter Naomi Nontombi in a tribute to her father. As a bishop of Johannesburg (1985-86) and Archbishop of...
A New Year Of Great Anxieties, Pride And Uncertainties
By Kalyani Shankar What does the crystal ball say about the year 2022? As we enter the new year, it is time to look ahead and gaze at the future. Of course, much can happen, which is unexpected and unknown. The year will be one of the multiple pivots:...
End Of An Era For Southeast Asia’s Oil And Gas Sector
By Arjavi Indraneesh The Covid-19 pandemic has marked the end of an era for Southeast Asia’s combined oil and gas production, pushing the region’s output in 2021 to below 5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) for the first time since 1998, a threshold that is not...
Two Years Of Covid-19 Outbreak And Lessons Not Learnt
By Dr. Gyan Pathak Wuhan Municipal Health Commission China had reported a cluster of cases and the novel coronavirus COVID-19 was eventually identified on December 31, 2019. It soon swept across the world, pushing health systems to the brink, necessitating lockdowns, with great loss of life and livelihoods. The...
A Precautionary Dose For Poll May Be Booster For Modi
By Sushil Kutty The Election Commission of India is what? Can’t be a caged parrot. That is the CBI! The Enforcement Directorate is to ‘harass’ the Opposition. A la the Income Tax Department. Ask Akhilesh Yadav. He will see red, having set his red cap on becoming 2nd time...
NITI Aayog’s Praise For Kerala’s Performance On Health Front
By P. Sreekumaran THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala has done it once again. For the fourth time in a row, the State has topped a ranking of States on health indicators. The ‘health index’ is part of a report prepared by the NITI Aayog, the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry and...
Effect Of Calamities Is Never Class Neutral
By Sanjay Roy The pandemic and its consequences manifested in different parts of the world and more importantly its differential impact on classes of people and segments of population reveals deeper chasms and structural divides that capitalism reproduces in its process of accumulation. In the twentieth century since ‘Spanish...
Fears Of EC Coming Under Executive’s Thumb Come True
By S N Sahu During a discussion in the Constituent Assembly on June 16, 1949 on Article 289 of the draft Constitution (the corresponding Article of the Indian Constitution is Article 324) on the Election Commission, Dr B.R. Ambedkar admitted that there is nothing “to provide against nomination of...
